Introduction

This chapter explores some general issues to complement coverage of specific policy domains later in the book. The first sections note the positioning of social control practices in welfare arrangements for disadvantaged households, mention some political underpinnings and suggest a tentative hypothesis about a ‘new behaviourism’ in UK social policy running from the mid-1990s through into the Cameron era. The analysis indicates that the close interweaving of support with disciplinary interventions that persisted historically in some practice areas has been reinvigorated and reinterpreted through contemporary politics, particularly for low-income and vulnerable groups. Discussion then turns to disability, where transformations in welfare arrangements illustrate the character of change, before concluding briefly with general points.

Social control within welfare systems

Chapter One speculated about government's control of behaviours by suggesting that while support and ‘nudges’ are deployed for the better off, harsher treatments tend to be applied to the poor. This may seem strange, given the valued assistance delivered for low-income households through social policies, and the public service orientations and commitments to social justice among some professionals. Nonetheless – and despite diversity in government's targets and purposes – strategies for social control in social policy areas often do seem to have negative implications for disadvantaged groups in particular. One reason for the impact on poor and vulnerable households is the link between disciplinary tendencies on the one hand and types of support arrangements on the other (Harrison and Sanders, 2006). Chapter One referred to the ‘social division of welfare thesis’, and to a characterisation of welfare systems in terms of an ensemble of mechanisms through which support and services for consumers have supplemented, substituted for or underpinned income from direct wages and private wealth (see Titmuss, 1958; Sinfield, 1978). Differing channels to welfare available for different households can markedly affect relative opportunities and access to resources, but forms of provision also have implications for the capacity and perceived political need to discipline populations (for the ‘social division of welfare surveillance’, see Henman and Marston, 2008; and for the ‘social division of social control’, see Chapter One, this volume). In contrast with welfare arrangements or pathways built around universalistic social rights, support focused selectively on needy clients may look more like a process of granting or giving than of responding to entitlements.